Praying won’t get you a free meal if you’re the 131st person in line at the St. Francis House.
The Gainesville ordinance, which caps the number of free meals at homeless shelters, was criticized again by residents at Thursday’s City Commission meeting.
The city threatened on April 2, 2009, to shut down the St. Francis House, a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in downtown Gainesville, if it did not begin complying with the city code’s section concerning soup kitchens, which limits the number of daily meals to 130. This made social workers and local church members question the reasoning behind the strict enforcement of the ordinance.
Miriam Elliott, who used to work at St. Francis, said she was saddened by the city forcing the shelter to lock its doors while it still has food to serve.
Assistant City Manager Fred Murry listed the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, the Salvation Army and Arbor House, a facility for homeless, pregnant women, as potential options for those who are turned away from food by the 130-meal limit.
Elliott, who now works at Arbor House, said the Arbor House is not open to the public and does not give out meals. The house’s residents, who are single mothers and pregnant women, use food stamps.
She also said the Salvation Army begins service at 4:30 p.m. while the meals at St. Francis are served at noon, which would make one wait for more than four hours to be fed.
The issue of meal limits have been debated since early 2009 when the city began enforcing the 1993 city code amendment, which limits the number of daily meals a shelter could provide, restricts certain areas from providing meals or shelter and caps the number of people who could stay the night at a shelter, according to the commission meeting’s agenda.
The City Commission approved a petition on Feb. 18 to lift the meal limit on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day and one additional day to be determined by the shelter.
